Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

While millions descend on Washington for the historic Inauguration of Barack Obama on Jan. 20, some Republicans see it as an occasion to get out of town.

Out of power on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and mostly out of favor on K Street, many emasculated elephants in the GOP herd will begin the Age of Obama with what amounts to an extended holiday vacation. Instead of fighting the quadrennial cold and what are expected to be record-setting crowds, they're heading out to greener pastures, with better temperatures, less hassle and more agreeable company.

"What better way to mark the Obama Inauguration (and his millions of adoring fans that will be in D.C.) than to get out of town to fabulous Las Vegas!" Charlie Spies, a Republican lawyer and former CFO to Mitt Romney’s campaign wrote in a blast e-mail to GOP friends. "We hope you can join us for dinner and a fun evening on Monday, Jan. 19, to celebrate the last few hours of our Republican president in the White House."

-- JONATHAN MARTIN

As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.

Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, "I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror"? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?

But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck -- either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.

-- PAUL KRUGMAN

Republican Party officials say they will try . . . to pass a resolution accusing President Bush and congressional Republican leaders of embracing “socialism,” underscoring deep dissension within the party at the end of Mr. Bush’s administration.

Those pushing the resolution, which will come before the Republican National Committee at its January meeting, say elected leaders need to be reminded of core principles. They said the RNC must take the dramatic step of wading into policy debates, which traditionally have been left to lawmakers.

-- RALPH Z. HALLOW

Where the heck have these guys been the last 8 years? Why didn’t the RNC rebel when Bush betrayed limited government, conservative foreign policy, and market economy principles in No Child Left Behind, the prescription drug entitlement, massive deficit spending, invading Iraq, and so on? The silence of GOP insiders during the last 8 years speaks volumes. As does their lame last minute decision to finally stand on principles.

-- PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE

The looming battle that the Republicans foresee, of course, is the one that began during the bailout struggles in the fall: the fight over Obama's plans to refashion our government into a heavily interventionist one, whether by a huge economic stimulus package or a universal health care plan. And they mean to fight it with the kind of arguments from anti-spending first principles that Pence, Hensarling, and Flake used against Republicans years ago, when the GOP was still flush with power. The socialist threat is urgent, they believe, and it is never too soon to launch pro-freedom counterattacks.

-- EVE FAIRBANKS

Moderate Republicans worry that their party's conservative wing is not going to change its ways in response to the GOP's election drubbing.

"I would hope that the more conservative members of our caucus would take a look at these election results," [Sen. Susan Collins of Maine] said. "It's difficult to make the argument that our candidates lost because they were not conservative enough."

-- JANET HOOK

Well, yes, it may be difficult to make that argument, but that hasn't stopped them.

Republican leaders are still coming to grips with exactly how and why they failed so miserably at the ballot box, but they've looked at the election results and not one of them has so much as hinted about moving the party back towards the center. Indeed, there are a half-dozen candidates seeking the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, and, to a person, they're all promising to keep the GOP as conservative as humanly possible. Those who've been loosely associated with moderate Republicans in the past are scrambling to downplay those ties as meaningless indiscretions . . .

Most of the party's leaders insist, reality notwithstanding, that Republicans lost because they "abandoned their conservative principles." They weren't, in other words, rigidly ideological enough, and didn't do enough to motivate and satisfy the demands of the party's far-right base.

-- STEVE BENEN

Top photograph by Exfordy